50 Fun Facts About Hephaestus

Which gift from Hephaestus trapped his mother fast, as revenge for throwing him off Olympus at birth?

A golden throne would not let her stand up again once she sat on it. When the other gods begged him to come home and free her, he refused, saying he had no mother.

Which god finally coaxed Hephaestus back to Olympus, riding on a mule, to release his trapped mother?

Dionysus succeeded with wine where threats had failed, and the tipsy smith rode home among a crowd of revellers. The procession became a favourite scene for Athenian vase painters.

In the best-known telling of Athena's birth, which tool does Hephaestus swing to split open Zeus's head?

An axe blow to Zeus's aching head let Athena leap out fully grown and armed. Other tellings give the job to a different god or Titan.

Which first mortal woman did Hephaestus mould from earth on Zeus's orders as a punishment for mankind?

Pandora was dressed by Athena in a silvery gown and sent down with a jar full of troubles. The jar only turned into a box through a sixteenth-century mistranslation.

What did Hephaestus forge to trap his unfaithful wife and her lover in bed for the other gods to see?

An invisible net of fine chain dropped over the couple, and he called the other gods in to look, who burst out laughing. They were freed only when another god promised that the fine would be paid.

Which Roman fire god, honoured each August with bonfires, was identified with the Greek smith Hephaestus?

Vulcan gave English the word volcano. At his August festival, Romans threw live fish onto the bonfires as offerings.

Which bronze guardian, said to be Hephaestus's gift to King Minos, circled Crete three times a day?

Talos had a single vein sealed at the ankle with a bronze nail, his one weak point. In one version the sorceress Medea pulled the nail out and his lifeblood drained away.

Greek vase painters sometimes drew which part of Hephaestus turned back to front to show his lameness?

His feet curve backwards on some vases, and he was said to walk with the help of a stick. Homer makes him lame from birth, while later writers blame his long fall from Olympus.

Which Greek hero's shield, forged by Hephaestus in the Iliad, later gave W. H. Auden a poem title?

Achilles needed new armour because his first set had been stripped from the body of his friend Patroclus. His mother went to the forge herself to ask for the replacement.

Which bird did the sleepy sentry Alectryon become after failing to warn the lover of Hephaestus's wife?

A rooster was what the furious lover made of him, which is why the bird crows at dawn to announce the sun. The episode is a late addition to the old story of the affair.

Which goddess, in Hesiod's telling, bore Hephaestus with no father at all to get even with Zeus?

Hera was answering the birth of Athena, whom Zeus had fathered without her. Homer tells it differently and gives the smith god two parents.

On which Aegean island did Hephaestus land after Zeus hurled him from Olympus in a day-long fall?

Lemnos was held sacred to him ever after. He was nursed there by the Sintians, the island's early people, and it stayed his favourite place on earth.

Which sea nymph hid young Hephaestus in an ocean grotto for nine years after his mother cast him out?

Thetis took him in together with the Oceanid Eurynome when he fell into the sea. Years later she called in the favour, visiting his forge to ask for armour for her own son.

Which god, who sees everything from his chariot in the sky, told Hephaestus about his wife's secret affair?

Helios caught the lovers in the act and went straight to the husband with the news. The chariot he drives across the sky is usually said to be the smith's own work.

Which Titan did a reluctant Hephaestus chain to a mountainside for giving fire to mortals?

Prometheus is shackled in the opening scene of the tragedy Prometheus Bound, where the smith does the job grudgingly. In some versions the fire had been stolen from the smith's own forge.

Beneath which Mediterranean volcano did Greek and Roman writers place the smoking forge of Hephaestus?

Mount Etna was also said to pin down the monster Typhon, trapped there by Zeus. Putting a forge under a volcano neatly explained the fire and smoke that rose from it.

Which giants, the first makers of Zeus's thunderbolts, did later poets make Hephaestus's forge assistants?

The Cyclopes were first given the job by the poet Callimachus in the third century BC. Virgil later named three of them toiling at the anvils: Brontes, Steropes and Pyracmon.

Which hero had to yoke the fire-breathing bronze bulls that Hephaestus made for King Aeëtes of Colchis?

Jason survived the flames thanks to an ointment from Medea, the king's own daughter, who had fallen in love with him. Ploughing with the bulls was one of his tasks to win the Golden Fleece.

Which blinded hunter carried Hephaestus's helper Cedalion on his shoulders as a guide to the sunrise?

Orion had stumbled to the smith's forge after losing his sight, and was lent the servant to steer him east. There the rays of the rising sun healed his eyes.

Alongside a smith's hammer and an anvil, which tool is a traditional symbol of Hephaestus?

Tongs complete the working smith's kit, and artists often showed him bearded, in an oval cap, with his tools in hand. Greek families kept small statues of him beside the hearth.

Which goddess is Hephaestus's unfaithful wife in the Odyssey, though the Iliad gives him a different bride?

Aphrodite is his wife in the Odyssey, where a blind bard sings the tale of her affair at a feast. Hesiod, like the Iliad, marries him to a different goddess.

Which god first tried to haul Hephaestus back to Olympus by force, only to be driven off with firebrands?

Ares backed down when the smith came at him with fire, so the job needed a gentler touch. The two were rivals in another way, since he was the lover of the smith's wife.

Which god got Hephaestus to free his trapped wife and her lover by offering to pay the fine himself?

Poseidon alone was not laughing in Homer's telling, and he kept pleading for the pair to be let go. Only his personal guarantee persuaded the smith to undo the chains.

Which bride of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, received a cursed necklace from Hephaestus as a wedding gift?

Harmonia was the child of his wife's affair, and in the usual telling the necklace was his revenge. It later passed to Jocasta, the doomed mother and wife of Oedipus.

In Hesiod's Theogony, Hephaestus marries Aglaea, the youngest of which trio of goddesses?

The Graces also supply his wife in Homer's Iliad, where she is simply called Charis. Either way, the lame and sooty smith ends up married to a goddess of beauty and charm.

Which helpers did Hephaestus build out of gold in the Iliad, able to speak, think and steady his steps?

Handmaidens of gold, made to look like living young women, hurried to support their master as he walked. Homer says the gods had given them intelligence, voices and strength.

Which objects did Hephaestus fit with golden wheels so they could roll themselves to the gods' feasts?

Tripods, twenty of them, were on his workbench when a visitor called in the Iliad. They could wheel themselves to a feast of the gods and back home again without being pushed.

In the Iliad, which twenty pieces of forge kit work by themselves when Hephaestus gives the order?

Bellows, all twenty, turned to the fire and blew wherever he wanted the flames higher. He set them going when he began work on a new suit of armour for a Greek hero.

In the Iliad, the gods roar with laughter as a limping Hephaestus bustles about doing which job at a feast?

Pouring the nectar from god to god, the hobbling smith set the whole company laughing. He had stepped in to calm a quarrel between Zeus and his mother.

The Temple of Hephaestus in Athens was long misnamed after which hero, wrongly thought to be buried there?

Theseus was believed to lie there after his bones were brought home from the island of Skyros in 475 BC. The mistake lives on in Thiseio, the Athens neighbourhood named after the temple.

The Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, still largely intact, spent the 7th century to 1834 in use as what?

A church of Saint George occupied the building for some twelve centuries. Begun in 449 BC, the marble temple still stands on a hill at the north-west side of the ancient Agora.

Hephaestin, a protein named after Hephaestus, helps carry which dietary metal from the gut into the blood?

Iron from food gets stuck in the gut lining without it, as researchers found while studying a strain of anaemic mice. They named the new protein after the Greek god of metalworking.

Some scholars trace Hephaestus's lameness to poisoning by which element, once mixed into copper for bronze?

Arsenic poisoning damages the nerves and can weaken the legs and feet, a risk for anyone smelting arsenical bronze. That may be why lame smiths turn up in the myths of several cultures.

Which Egyptian patron god of craftsmen, worshipped at Memphis, did Greek writers equate with Hephaestus?

Ptah was matched with the Greek smith as early as Herodotus. His great temple at Memphis, Hut-ka-Ptah, is believed to be the origin of the name Egypt, by way of Greek.

Clay dug from the spot where Hephaestus supposedly fell to earth was prized as a cure for which of these?

Snakebite, bleeding and madness were all treated with the clay, and the god's priests were said to heal wounds made by serpents. Stamped tablets of it stayed in use until the 19th century.

In the Homeric Hymn to Hephaestus, where did people live before he and Athena taught them crafts?

In caves in the mountains is where the short hymn pictures early humans. With the crafts the two gods taught, it says, people now live at ease in their own houses all year round.

During nine hidden years in a sea grotto, what did young Hephaestus make for the nymphs who saved him?

Jewellery was his first craft: pins, clasps, cups and necklaces, forged where no other god or mortal knew to look for him. Only his two rescuers shared the secret.

In Virgil's epic, which Trojan hero is given a shield made by the Roman Hephaestus at his mother's urging?

Aeneas carries the future history of Rome on his shield, right down to the victory of Augustus at Actium in 31 BC. His divine mother talked her smith husband into forging it.

Which monsters of the Twelve Labours did Heracles flush out with a noisy bronze rattle made by Hephaestus?

The Stymphalian birds took to the air at the din, and the hero shot them down with his arrows. Athena had brought him the rattle because the marsh would not bear his weight.

Which contest was the most spectacular event of the Hephaesteia, Athens's festival of Hephaestus?

A torch race shared the programme with a great sacrifice and music contests. On the god's own island, every fire was put out for nine days during the festival until a fresh flame arrived from Delos.

In which 1940 Disney film does Hephaestus, under his Roman name, forge lightning bolts for Zeus to throw?

Fantasia sets the scene to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, where a storm breaks up a festival for the god of wine. Zeus hurls the freshly made bolts down at the guests.

In Rick Riordan's The Lost Hero, which fire-conjuring demigod is revealed to be a son of Hephaestus?

Leo Valdez can summon flames from nothing, a rare gift among the god's children that his cabin mates call a curse. He also repairs a broken bronze dragon he finds in the woods.

Which Alabama city is guarded by a 56-foot statue of the Roman Hephaestus, made for the 1904 World's Fair?

Birmingham had the giant cast from its own local metal to show off the city's foundries. After years without a proper home, the statue was raised on Red Mountain above the city in the 1930s.

Which British actor played a now-mortal Hephaestus in the 2012 film Wrath of the Titans?

Bill Nighy's smith is credited in the film with forging the thunderbolt, trident and pitchfork of the three ruling gods. He dies holding off an attack so the heroes can enter a labyrinth.

Which Spanish painter's 1630 canvas shows Apollo telling the Roman Hephaestus about his wife's affair?

Diego Velázquez painted the scene in Rome on his first trip to Italy, giving the smith's helpers the look of ordinary labourers. He carried the canvas home to Spain in his own luggage.

In Rick Riordan's The Battle of the Labyrinth, Hephaestus keeps a forge inside which American volcano?

Mount St. Helens is where Percy Jackson finds the forge overrun by enemy smiths. He escapes by setting off an earthquake that blasts him clean out of the mountain.

Which earth-born king of Athens, a son of Hephaestus raised by Athena, became the Charioteer constellation?

Erichthonius was said to be lame like his father and to have invented the four-horse chariot to get around. Zeus was so impressed by his driving that he set him among the stars.

Which river god of Troy did Hephaestus drive back with flames to rescue a Greek hero in the Iliad?

Scamander was close to drowning the Greeks' best fighter when the smith was sent in. His fire dried up the waters until the river god gave up the fight.

Which Phaeacian king, host to Odysseus, had gold and silver guard dogs by Hephaestus at his palace door?

Alcinous owned watchdogs that would never age or die, set on either side of his doorway. His whole shining palace was said to be the smith god's work.

The earliest hint of Hephaestus's worship is a name written at Knossos in which Bronze Age script?

Linear B writing at Knossos spells out a man's name built on the god's, a sign he was already worshipped. The name Hephaestus itself probably comes from a language older than Greek.